I Have Seen Nothing, I Have Seen All

Lam ara shayyanaan , ra'ayt kla shay'

Yaser Kassab

Synopsis

After over six years out of his country, the Syrian filmmaker Yaser Kassab continues to attempt to recount the war from the sad and soulless scenery of exile. Imprisoned by the banal decor of an apartment that could be anywhere, how is he to express the anger, the sadness of seeing himself deprived of his family, his country, to live a life on hold? Interspersed telephone conversations. Cold or broken screens displaying the blurred faces of loved ones. Through his conversations with his father who stayed in Syria, he tries to break the silence. From a snow-covered landscape, we are suddenly transported to the ruined streets of Aleppo. The passage from one country to the other, long travelling shots in the car: now he embraces the image of displacement to talk of this war that pushes everyone out, dead or alive. While the landscapes roll past, his father talks. It is a question of the tomb of his younger brother—buried in the park where they used to play as children—that the regime is demanding for it to be moved. As if even the dead did not have the right to rest. As if this tearing away was not meant to end.